BioHPC Cloud:: User Guide

Lab Credit Accounts, Costs and Charging

Maintaining such a large pool of workstations along with the
software and access infrastructure takes a lot of time and effort.
Machines gradually age and need to be replaced. Therefore
Bioinformatics Facility has
to recover its BioHPC Cloud investment by charging users for access.
Every BioHPC Cloud user must have access to (or be an owner of) an
Lab credit account with hours available to be used. Every user can set up a Lab credit
account (using "My Accounts" page), but
we strongly recommend that all users from the same research
group use one Lab credit account created and maintained by a designated
group member, the Lab credit account owner can add (and remove) other users as
needed. Each Lab credit account must be credited with hours, it can be done by
selecting "Add Hours" link on "My Lab Credit Accounts" page, the hours can be
purchased with a Cornell account or a credit card (processed by
Cornell Store, Bioinformatics Facility does not store nor processes credit card
information). Pricing depends on the workstation type, but since it
only covers our costs it is generally very low, even compared to
purchasing a new machine. Current pricing is listed on
this page.

In order to reserve workstation time user needs to have access to a
Lab credit account with sufficient amount of hours. A user may belong to more than
one Lab credit account, which can be selected on reservation page. Only actually used hours are charged, if
a user cancels or
shortens the reservation only the hours that have been used will be
subtracted from the Lab credit account. However, available hours are computed
with all the reserved time included to prevent overbooking. NOTE:
"time used" is defined as the wall clock time elapsed when your
reservation is active - it has nothing to do with how much you
actually used the CPU/RAM etc during this time. "Time used" reflects
the span for which you had the workstation reserved.

There are different types of Lab machines - e.g. general workstations, medium
memory workstations, large
memory workstations. Cost of time for different workstation types is
different, but any lab credit account can be used with any machine
type, just the amount of available hours will be different.
The conversion rates are listed on
pricing page and on lab
credit account management page, the latter also shows how many
hours you have amiable on each server type. It is possible to transfer hours from one credit account to another,
provided that you are an owner of the source account and you are allowed
to use the target account. You can access transfer page from the bottom of "My Lab
Credit Accounts" page or directly
here.

There are two types of Lab Credit Accounts: "hours" and
"membership". The first type, "hours", allows users to reserve
workstations for as many hours as available on the account. The
second type, "membership" allows users to use continuously the types
of machines that belong to the given membership type with some
limits, like maximum total amount of hours reserved and maximum
single reservation length. The limits are 'rolling' which means that
they have to be met an any given time, but get updated over time.
For example if you make the maximum length reservation with a
"membership" account now, you will be able to extend it by one day
tomorrow at the same time. See our
pricing page for more details about available membership
accounts.

Each new research group may request an exploratory Lab credit account with free
100 hours, please contact us by e-mail at
cbsu@cornell.edu for more details.
This is one time credit for a new PI only, not for each new project.

In exceptional circumstances Bioinformatics Facility Advisory Board may grant free Lab
hours, application for free hours must include disclosure of the
group financial standing (including justification why the group
cannot afford Lab fees) as well as the research/educational project
description. The application should be send to
jp86@cornell.edu.